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"A Christian community is
therefore a healing community not because wounds are cured and pains are
alleviated, but because wounds and pains become openings or occasions
for a new vision of Christ in the gospel! Mutual confession then
becomes mutual deepening of hope, and sharing weakness becomes a
reminder to one and all of the coming strength. Many people in this life
suffer because they are anxiously searching for the man or woman, the
event or encounter, which will take their loneliness away. But when
they enter a house with real hospitality they soon see that their own
wounds must be understood not as sources of despair and bitterness, but
as signs that they have to travel on in obedience to the calling sounds
of their own wounds…
From this we get the idea of the kind of help a believer may offer. A believer/minister is not a doctor whose primary task is to take away pain. Rather, he deepens the pain to a level where it can be shared. When someone comes with his loneliness to the minister, he can only expect that his loneliness will be understood and felt, so that he no longer has to run away from it but can accept it as an expression of his basic human condition. When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope. Through this common search, hospitality becomes community. Hospitality becomes community as it creates a unity based on the shared confession of our basic brokenness and on a shared hope. This hope in turn leads us far beyond the boundaries of human togetherness to Him who calls people away from the land of slavery to the land of freedom. In Christ the one who was wounded for the wounded!" -Henry Nouwen |
Comments
I see this a lot at the homeless hospital as the men deal with their health issues as well as their substance abuse. While the author means it metaphorically, it is such beautiful writing because there is such a connection between mental pain and physical brokenness--broken skin, broken bones, broken minds, and broken hearts. Often you cannot treat the pain of a broken soul until you treat physical pain.
"But when they enter a house with real hospitality they soon see that their own wounds must be understood not as sources of despair and bitterness, but as signs that they have to travel on in obedience to the calling sounds of their own wounds..."
Love. This.
I was pondering today the truth that as a therapist, I am a broken healer. We are all broken. And the effort we put into acting like we're not broken, only postpones the healing that awaits us. Thanks Abbie for you openness and honesty. I miss you.
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